Lmst

When you have an architect in the family...

#House #Architecture #Fail #Roof #LogHouse

Standard log house typical for the region except for the roof. There is a cutaway section in the center, with a recessed window area looking over small roofed area interrupting the center of the house.

Same house, different angle showing the three windows in the recessed section.

Yesterday, when it wasn't pouring. Been moving the recycled concrete beams to the fence. This will be a small firewood store. Still need to add a roof.

This side of the fence is for apple wood for grilling/smoking, a stack has already begun. The other side got two concrete beams last night too. That's where I'll restack the wood for the sauna, which is currently resting against the back of the building, a bad practice.

#Homestead #Firewood #Construction #LogHouse #Sauna #Well

A small log sauna with green metal roof. A stack of firewood has been piled onto two concrete beams resting on the ground against a fence. A small pile with more firewood is next to it, with a white plastic bucket. Some trees frame the scene. In the foreground, a covered well with some plant pots and hoses.

Demolished the rest of the toilet cubicle, to get to the wall and window behind.

For some reason it was insulated with rockwool. Which had a nice stash of eaten kernels inside it.

The toilet was still functional, alas, I seem to have nudged it a little too much and the reservoir started leaking, so now that's taken to pieces, cleaned up and descaling over night. Had a lot of scale sludge in it. What fun. Did I mention I love plumbing?

Not sure why there is another door nailed to the logs behind, hope it's not hiding any nasty surprises. Will have to carefully peel that off, but not today.

Made a replacement toilet paper stand from attic scraps as there is now no wall 😆

#Renovation #DIY #Homestead #LogHouse

Half a toilet cubicle with a toilet standing in it. A cable dangles from the ceiling and a ladder stands with a plastic tub to collect reclaimed screws.

Same place, now a side wall made from fake tiles painted onto some fake wood is peeled off, revealing a few cm of rockwool between battens. There's a hole in it near the top.

Close-up of three almond-sized kernels on the floor. Each has the tip bitten off and is hollowed out. Not sure what they were.

Same corner, with the toilet still standing but the flush reservoir slightly crooked. The cubicle is gone apart from the floor that the toilet is bolted to. There's a limewashed brick wall on one side and a wooden window in a log wall on the other. Part of the log wall has a green door panel nailed to it. On the side stands a quickly erected stand for a toilet paper roll and some other utensils, weighed down with a brick. Some bin bags collect various junk.

Typical renovation of an old building story:

https://www.youtube.com/@DerFachwerker/videos [Sorry, only German]

0. We bought an old house! Exciting!
1. We'll change a few little things and paint the walls
2. Ok, it needs more serious work
3. I bought an excavator
4. Ok, might take 3 years or so
5. 4 years later: I might finish it in 10 years

Thanks to fixing up a boat before, I started at 10 year estimate from the start and expect it to double 😆

#Renovation #DIY #LogHouse #Fachwerk #HalfTimber

Cleared out the basement.

An old shelf with preserved plums from 2018 that nobody is willing to taste.

A mix of drain pipes, some steel, one plastic and two made of cancer.

And some firewood from the old potato storage planks.

The hole is a sump for a bilge pump, although we've never seen any water down there.

This area is one of my main headaches. It's an obvious retrofit, the walls are ok, the ceiling strong but it is so crookedly inserted that I'd have to make a ramp in the room above to leave it as is. Currently the floor is a hillscape of poorly spread concrete.

Perhaps I will remove one layer of bricks and reset the ceiling. The concrete chips away suspiciously easily anyways. Loads of work though 😕

#Renovation #LogHouse #Basement #Cellar #DIY #Cleanup #Homestead

A plastic tub with large glass jars that you mostly see the metal lids of. The lids are shiny with some rust or patterns printed on them. A few have labels translating to "Plums, 2018".

View down a trapdoor into a low retrofit basement with cement brick walls. There's a few small galvanized steel pipes cemented into the floor and a large concrete ring forming a sump. Four large drain pipes lay on the floor, next to them a wooden board. There's rust and spiderwebs on the frame of the trapdoor. It's somewhat dimly lit.

Ohh, fun stuff: Ants Pants got given a neighbouring homestead full of "treasure". Which appears to be mostly a pile of old tyres, a collapsing cob building and a burnt out log house.

https://youtu.be/JKr0u7KNRxQ

Should be fun to watch! :)

#AntsPants #LogHouse #Treasure #Homestead

Another one, with a beautifully restored stone foundation that is probably a fake on top of concrete.

Here there's two-paned vertical split windows with a thin plastic insert. The top and side framing is exactly like ours, but there's a fancified bottom cutout. Some of the windows do allow one pane to open inwards, some are fixed, a good decision. This look works even better.

The upstairs window is original wood in less than new condition, but with fresh paint.

#LogHouse #Renovation

Another yellow house with brown accents behind a hedge. The foundation is stones that appear to be lose but probably are cemented in from the back, as they are too perfectly aligned to be original. The window siding is white with an elaborate bottom. The windows themselves are PVC split vertically into two panes. Some of them with one pane opening inwards. All panes have a horizontal plastic bar inserted into the glass package near the top, emulating the original split there. The attic window is wood, three vertical panes with a small openable section at the center pane top.

The roof is fold-joined metal and the gutter features an odd funnel near the top from a retrofitting downpipe. A new looking plastic greenhouse lurks in the garden behind. The driveway is recently paved cement stones.

Also in #Zarasai: Lots of old log houses similar to ours that are already renovated. So lots to learn and examples to look at. Especially interested in windows right now.

This here got special edition windows that open to the outside. The plastic bars inside the glass package work fine and emulate the original look well enough without disrupting function.

We don't have the decorative frames.

It appears to have a basement.

#LogHouse #Renovation

A yellow log house in typical regional style with horizontal exterior planking. Thereis a basement window in the plastered foundation. The windows are white PVC with exterior hinges and inserted plastic cross to emulate the look of the original smaller window panes. There is a green painted wooden trim and a white painted elaborate cutout at the top. The corner trim is painted matching green as well.

Removed all the fence and rocks and bricks from around the house, apart from the two large concrete beams on the half-assedly renovated part. Need to pull those out very carefully.

All filled back in and raked to slope away from the house for now.

Need to fetch the German lottery machine and buy a bunch of stuff, like a dumptruck full of sand/aggregate to continue on the foundation repair.

#Foundation #LogHouse #DIY #Renovation #Homestead

Pickaxe digging up a bunch of fly ash bricks that were two layers deep with concrete between them forming a flower bed around the foundation, which is all bad ideas. Freshly disturbed dark soil and some vegetation are around. The foundation here has been patched by some unmotivated person with a bucket of mortar.

Side of the house, disturbed soil partially raked over already. Towards the far end near a wheelbarrow full of bricks, a trench has coughed up another short length of concrete pylon.

Same view, now with the bricks and concrete all gone and the trench closed again and raked over to form a smooth grade away from the foundation.

The carpet is in the living room. That counts, right?

Actually it turns out we'd never moved the crappy TV table that was in that corner and there was still lots of mouse poop under it. The old man was throwing poison everywhere but the mice ran wild anyways. That took some time cleaning up.

This is the nicest room we have. The log walls are plastered with clay mortar, which somehow isn't cracking like mad, so the wood must be moving less than people claim.

#Renovation #Carpet #DIY #LogHouse

Corner of a room. Two windows hidden by curtains and a wooden floor painted in "floor paint" which is always this colour and only this colour (a fake looking shade of brown). Two pictures hang on the wall, a hand painted cat and some dude on a horse stabbing a lindwurm. There's a new carpet bundled in the otherwise empty corner. Some cables peek out from behind the curtain.

This is all @piggo's fault.

We're thinking about raising the windows, because on the inside, they're very low. At knee level, to be specific.

On the inside it would look fine, but we can't decide if it looks weird on the outside or not. Too close to the roof beam casing? Or not?

Excuse the crude gimposhop job.

#LogHouse #Windows #Renovation #Plan #Homestead

Very skilled log house repair, on his own:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc-CSQlWaE0

#LogHouse #Woodworking #Renovation #DIY #Solo

New record holder for biggest nail I pulled out of a wall yet.

Came out easy after sticking the crowbar through the ring and twisting it.

#Nail #DIY #Renovation #LogHouse #Homestead

A gloved hand holding up a giant rusty spike that was hammered into a log beam wall that's visible behind. It has a square cut pointy tip and the rear is bent into a ring. It's about 30 cm long and perhaps 12mm diameter.

House door shopping (exterior doors) for our 90 year old farm house is hilarious.

"We don't make double doors this narrow"

Ok, big single door then?

"We don't make single doors this wide"

Apparently between single and double doors there exists a ~20cm no-doors-land.

Mind you, this is already custom doors, which cost more than a replacement engine for our car.

So either I make my own fucking doors or start padding the frames, which I don't like.

#LogHouse #Renovation #Doors #Building #DIY

Heavy snowfall outside, so I worked on the bathroom a little.

Taking the toilet cubicle apart. We'll leave the toilet standing until spring when the outhouse gets a little less cold. Can't mix concrete in this weather anyways.

For some reason the cubicle was insulated, which makes no sense given that there's no heat source inside, not even a socket for an electric heater.

Some rockwool and thin OSB being reclaimed, and many screws.

#DIY #Renovation #LogHouse #Homestead

A box that someone hastily erected inside a larger store room. The OSB panels on the outside have been partially removed, revealing a layer of rockwool beneath. There's a light switch, some cables, a bin bag full of toilet paper and a piece of linoleum floor peeking out. A mascarpone jug full of screws is on an old table.

Polish scientist talking about using moss for chinking log houses, an almost lost knowledge that is very hard to find any good information on.

He even published an article about it (in Polish).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO_MMHLB3NE

So good to find some information on this.

#LogHouse #Building #Renovation #Moss

The other day we went to the forest to buy some moss for stuffing between the logs of the sauna and house.

It was free and grows back.

Picked the grass and leaves off and laid it out to dry in the sauna.

If you're wondering how long this building material lasts, I have no idea, but at least 90 years. The original moss is still good, just a few spots that need patching from shrunken logs.

#Renewable #Moss #Building #LogHouse #DIY

Moss on a rotten log. Some has been harvested and is in a plastic bag for transportation.

Moss laid out on a sauna bench on top of old newspapers.

Every nail pulled from old wood tells a story. This one says: "It's nice and dry in this log".

Luckily they all pretty much told the same story. Only one broke and it was a very small one that was rusted on the part exposed to air.

Interestingly, apart from the windshield wiper arm and one cut nail, they were all wire formed nails. I expected more forged/cut nails in this old house, but it looks like nail manufacturing got industrialized very early on.

#Nail #LogHouse #Metal